


In Vinculis

by ElDiablito_SF



Series: Snippets in Time [20]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: F/M, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 17:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athos pays Porthos a visit and receives some friendly advice.  But will he take it?  And even if he does, will Aramis forgive him for the way they last parted?  Picks up fiver years after "The Best We Could."</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vinculis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [speakmefair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/gifts).



> Original post note:
> 
> Dear Rio – happy birthday!  Apparently, I was a big jerk earlier this year when I wrote “The Best We Could.”  So, for this fic, I wanted to make you something that a) made up for that particular fic in every way and b) kept you entertained for longer than 3 seconds.  I think I may have succeeded in one of my goals!

 

 

                                                                                 ** _In Vinculis_**

 

_Pierrefonds, 1654_

            It had been an overcast day, but that would not prevent the hunting party from setting out after a brief discussion with the owner of the château about whether the servants should follow with the _entire_ lunch (consisting of a roasted pheasant and two stuffed capons) or merely the afternoon snack of pheasant alone and a side of quails, prepared on a spit, to the master’s liking.

            The master of the house, in whom the reader could easily recognize our good friend le baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds, finally acceded to his guest’s insistence that the pheasant alone would suffice, given they had the appropriate amount of wine to wash the blasted bird down with.  His guest, the equally easily recognizable M. le comte de La Fère, was not particularly hungry, having sojourned at Pierrefonds for the past two days, and therefore having eaten what he swore was the equivalent of a month’s provisions for a small village, all thanks to his host’s ardent displays of hospitality.  At the conclusion of this aforementioned second day of feasting, Athos insisted on getting some exercise, lest he become unable to fit back into any of his riding clothes, thus threatening to remain at the house of Porthos indefinitely - a proposition which in no way displeased his old friend.

            “You disappoint me in your old age, my friend,” Porthos chastised while dismounting in the middle of a clearing.  “There was a time when you could eat just as much as I!”

            “You forget, however, my dear Porthos, that at the time you refer to, you and I were perpetually starving, and what we considered a feast back then would now-a-days prove to you to be an insufficient midday nibble.”  Athos, who in his mid-fifties had apparently lost none of his former agility, leapt out of his saddle and tethered his mount to the nearest tree.

            For a moment Porthos looked wistful.

            “Yes,” he finally spoke, coming out of his reverie, “Our stomachs may have been empty back then, but our hearts were full of fire!”

            “It is true – we were constantly up to no good.”  Athos smiled and sat down on the damp grass, careless of his cloak.

            “I cannot speak for you, but as for myself, everything I did was to my benefit,” and Porthos gave his graying mustache a playful twirl.

            Athos seemed to reflect on this, and neither confirming nor denying his friend’s allegations, he simply reached out his hand and said, “Well then, have you brought a musket, or am I to shoot these ducks with my pistols alone?”

            “Shoot ducks?” Porthos seemed confused.  “From… where _exactly_?”

            “Why, right here, of course!”  And with these words, Athos spread out on the grass, using his canteen for a makeshift pillow.  These words and such actions did not dispel the confusion with which Porthos was overcome.  Athos patted the grass beside him.  “Come now, is the musket loaded?”  Porthos nodded, uncertain about where this was going, however, still filled with remnants of the old habit of trusting Athos at his word.  “Well, give it here.”

            Having received the musket from his old friend, Athos propped it against his shoulder, the barrel pointing straight at the sky as he lay on the grass, and then, much to Porthos’s consternation, as the latter was not expecting it, he unloaded one of his pistols into the air.  The noise of the weapon had caused a flurry of activity, as birds of every kind startled and took flight before their eyes.  Without lifting an extra muscle, Athos aimed, and unloaded the musket into the sky.  A duck fell. 

            Porthos, who had then understood his friend’s intentions, broke out into a raucous laughter and lay down on the grass next to Athos, taking the musket from him.

            “I have grown devious in my old age,” Athos smirked.

            “Yes, and extremely slothful,” Porthos nodded, reloading the musket with fresh gunpowder.

            “More devious than slothful,” Athos assured him, not bothering to search out the vanquished duck.

            “You should have told me this was to be your idea of exercise.  Again?” Porthos offered his friend the reloaded gun. 

            “I may wait for it this time.”  Athos shrugged.  Apparently he was in no hurry.  “They’ll come around again.  They always do.”

            “Perhaps after all the years, Aramis has actually rubbed off on you.”

            “I would be surprised if he hadn’t, after so much friction, as it were.”  Athos tried to suppress a self-satisfied grin, but it escaped out of the corner of his mouth.

            “Oh!  Well!  That’s just…”  
            “More than you’ve ever wanted to imagine?”

            “Don’t think I haven’t imagined it before!”

            “Oh, _have_ you?”  Another duck had the misfortune of flying overhead.  Athos brought it down with a single shot.  “Damn this recoil,” he mumbled and rubbed his shoulder, which had just been pummeled into the ground.  “Perhaps this wasn’t as great an idea as I had anticipated.”

            “Do you find your slothful deviance to be foiled by your age-related decrepitude?”  Porthos chuckled, and received a half-hearted slap from Athos, which was more of a wave of a hand, as if he were swatting a fly.

            “Keep mocking my age, and before you know it, you’ll _be_ it.”

            “I’ll still be more handsome.”

            “No doubt!”

            The two old friends laughed and settled again into an easy silence, while Porthos was busy reloading the musket again.

            “It’s as if there is some part of me that refuses to grow up,” Athos muttered, breaking the stillness.  “I think I’ve done it all, you know?  I even raised a child – I have no idea how.  But there’s this…”

            “Longing,” Porthos completed his thought.

            “Longing?” Athos looked up at his friend.  “Why do you say that?”

            “Because, you idiotic man, you’ve never really had the one thing that you’ve always wanted.  Or, if you did have it, you always managed to somehow fuck it up and make it go away again!”

            “What are you talking about?”  Athos propped himself up on his elbow.

            “Are you really this stupid or are you just pretending to be?”  Porthos put the musket down on the grass, for fear of being tempted to clobber his friend with it.

            “Humor me,” Athos replied.

            “Aramis, you imbecile!  That’s what I’m talking about.  Good Lord, or do you think he and I never talk about you just because you avoid talking about _him_ like the plague?”

            “In all my life, I never would have figured Aramis to be more forthcoming about this than I would be!”  Athos plopped himself back down, demonstratively, instantly regretting the force of his own descent. 

            Porthos grinned at him slyly.  “Well, perhaps he just doesn’t handle his drink as well as you do… _in his old age_.” 

            “Oh, he would just beat you for that.  Ruthlessly.”  Athos laughed and closed his eyes against the rays of sunlight trying to break through the scattered clouds.  The ground felt warm beneath him, despite the dew.

            “Do you really need me to tell you where he is again?  You know, like I did… what is it now?  Thirty years ago?”

            Athos scratched his head without opening his eyes.

            “Um… twenty-five maybe?”

            “You didn’t answer my question.”  Porthos prodded him with the barrel of the reloaded musket.  Athos shooed that fly away too.

            “He’s in Melun,” Athos finally replied, opening his eyes and moving the barrel of the musket out of his face.  “A vicar general of the diocese, no less, our Chevalier d’Herblay.”

            “So, you _know_?”

            “Of course.”

            “Then, pardon the obvious question, but what the hell are you doing _here_?”

            It was Athos’s turn to appear perplexed.

            “Here – is where you live,” he said, opening his arms as if it was the most obvious of all the axioms in the world.

            “You said you’d come from Paris where you have been for about a month.  Melun is much closer to Paris than Pierrefonds.  And yet, I find you here.”

            “I wanted to see you,” Athos blinked up at Porthos as if the light was bothering his eyes.  It struck Porthos as a particularly sincere sort of a statement and suddenly he felt chagrined for questioning his friend’s motives.  “Was I wrong to come?”

            “No!  Of course not – that’s not at all what I meant!”

            “Then, what _do_ you mean?”

            “ _Will_ you go to Melun?”

            “Why?”

            “What is it with the two of you, fools!”  Porthos threw his hands up in the air, and stood up, as if sitting next to such obstinacy was making him nervous.  “Half of what you say to each other is the opposite of what you actually mean, and the other half is generally insults!  One has to wonder why you even bother to speak at all!  And moreover why to _me_?”

            This little oration clearly caught Athos off-guard.

            “Does he _want_ me to come?” Athos finally asked, a small glimmer appearing in his dark eyes.

            “ _Yes_ , you hopelessly idiotic man!  A thousand times – yes!”

 

_Paris, earlier_

            Aramis might have been, Athos figured, their invisible protector, but that in no way exempted him from being the one observed from a distance.  It was never his intention to follow him, to get in his way, to collect information, none of that was honorable, nor, for that matter, appropriate.  Aramis’s own, albeit increasingly infrequent, letters have always sufficed before, and would have to suffice again.

            These letters seemed to flow from an ancient understanding, a vow made, rather than from any desire to convey actual information to their recipient.  So many times, after casting his eyes over a rhetorical question - _When, my friend, will we be allowed to be happy?_ – Athos felt himself on the verge of calling for his horse to set out to answer that veiled call.  But, having quit Noisy-Le-Sec, his correspondent never left him a way of knowing which direction to ride in.

            That was, until she walked into his salon in Bragelonne, resplendent even in her traveling attire, too old now to wear man’s clothing, as she laughingly said, throwing her cloak at his feet, “Didn’t I tell you to expect me, Count?”

            But he had not found her to be too old, her breasts resting on his chest, as his hand absentmindedly stroked her naked hips, her skin showing only the earliest signs of losing any of its youthful elasticity, imbued as she was with perfumes and pomades.  No longer lavender, for which he thanked God, and buried his nose in her disheveled blond curls.

            He had not asked the duchess de Chevreuse why she had come that time, nor any of the other times subsequently that he found himself waking up next to her, be it in Blois or in Paris, kissing her voracious lips in the same bed where a few years earlier he had said farewell to Aramis, in his apartment on rue Guénégaud.  She might have been too old to wear man’s clothing, but apparently she still found it in herself to dress as a chambermaid, as she threw herself in his arms and laughed the wicked laugh of Marie Michon that Aramis might have often heard.

            “You remind me of him, you know,” she had brought it up first, although for some time he had already been wondering exactly whom he had been going to bed with – this woman, or the man she had reminded him of.  “He had eyes like no one else I had ever met,” she said, softly kissing his eyelids.  “So dark, so deep, like a vortex,” her lips slid lightly along his cheekbones.  “Devouring,” she whispered, and kissed him, as if by that act alone willing the past into the room with them.  He had never breathed a word to her, and yet, it was as if she knew everything, as if she knew more than he’d ever admitted even to Aramis himself.  “He was a furnace,” she whispered, her hand sliding up his thigh, “I wanted to immolate myself in it.”  He never stopped her, he wanted her to keep going, to say all the things that he would have never spoken in a million years.

            She kissed like a man, he thought, her lips applying joyous pressure to his, never gentle, never yielding.  She took what she wanted, and slipped away quietly into the night, like that other catlike creature from his past.

            Years passed.  He did not know when and whether to expect her, only that he needed her when she was before him:  this woman who in his youth seemed unwittingly to take so much from him, yet who has given him the world by bearing his son.  There was something about her that left an indelible mark on everything she touched, including him.

            “Oh my, whom have you been entertaining in here?”  D’Artagnan wrinkled his nose as he sniffed the air of the apartment on rue Guénégaud.  “And here I was hoping you were only in Paris to see me.”

            “You know I have come to see Raoul,” Athos responded, playfully giving his friend a small shove.

            “So is this a military issue lady’s glove I just found in the folds of your arm chair?”  It was too late to lie and later still to challenge the man before him to a duel, so Athos merely laughed and snatched the telltale particle of clothing out of his friend’s hand.  “I would have expected this _from Aramis_ ,” d’Artagnan added with a careless shrug.

            Athos let his eyes linger on his friend’s face longer than the Gascon probably expected, allowing him to glimpse the underlying disgust beneath the seeming carelessness of the statement.  Although disgust of what, given so many readily apparent options, was beyond Athos’s ability to guess at this stage in his life.  He knew he had himself been responsible, at least in part, for the ever-growing rift between d’Artagnan and Aramis, these two men in his life.  And if d’Artagnan had forgotten, or had been willing to pretend to forget, then he was thankful for that.  He crumbled the duchess’s glove in his hand and quickly changed the subject the only way he could, “Is the King well?”

            It was she who had told him about Melun, the vicarage, and - later on - about Nicholas Fouquet, the King’s new superintendant of finances, under whose generous protectorate M. d’Herblay had apparently found himself.  Fouquet, whose own dubiously acquired fortunes had surpassed even those of Marazin, secret coffers notwithstanding, had been the perfect star for Aramis to hitch his wagon to.

            “Why do you still spy on him?” Athos had then asked.

            “ _Spy_?” she giggled in that way that made her instantly seem twenty years younger.  “I’m not Richelieu, darling, I do not have a network of spies!”

            “But, Marie, after so many years, so many…” Lovers?  Husbands?  No – one does not say such things to a woman, even if she is one’s mistress.  “Distractions,” he completed his thoughts.  “Why still follow Aramis’s movements?”

            “Oh, Olivier,” she said, as she stroked her fingers over his temples, something akin to true pity coloring her tone.  “The _furnace_ ,” she whispered, and her lips closed over his once more.

            He wanted to call for his horse again then, even as his mouth traveled down her long neck, down the valley between her breasts and past her navel.  Call that horse to be saddled – _to Melun_ – and ride, ride through day and night, never stopping.  She called out his name again, and he knew that this would have to be enough.

 

  


_Melun, 1654_

           

            The vicarage was easy enough to find, even without the corpulent figure of a shrill-voiced man chasing children away as if they were a flock of wild chickens.

            “Bazin!”

            “Monsieur!”  The servant of Aramis had stumbled backwards and nearly upended himself into an open trough.  The Resurrected Christ would not have produced such an effect upon him as beholding Athos had appeared to render.

            “Well?  Are you going to make me guess, you imbecile, or are you going to tell me where your master is?”

            “Monsieur le Vicaire-général?”

            “No, your  _other_  master:  Monsieur Jesus Christ!”

            “A thousand pardons, Monsieur,” the trembling man had finally begun to get his bearings.  “But Monsieur d’Herblay is hearing confession at this hour.”

            “Confession?”  Athos paused.  This was working out more perfectly than he had anticipated.  “Thank you, Bazin, you have rendered me a great service.”

            And with a smile on his lips, le comte de La Fère headed towards the church, heedless of the mutely outstretched hand of M. Bazin in his vain attempt to stop him.

            Kneeling on the prie-dieu in the confessional booth, Athos pressed his forehead against the lattice and spoke the requisite words, “Forgive me father, for I have sinned.  It’s been five years since my last confession.”

            On the inside of the confessional, Athos could almost hear the priest halt his breath, and then he heard the sound of the sliding screen snapping shut across the other grille and a key turn locking the booth from the inside.

            “And why, my son, has it taken you so long to come to Christ,” the priest asked softly.

            “It was not Christ I had been staying away from, father,” Athos replied, his cheek sliding along the cool lattice, his ear strained towards the muffled voice from within.

            “Then, why come now?”

            “I wish to make an act of contrition and confess my sins to you.”

            “You mean to God,” the voice corrected him, coolly.

            “I know what I mean, father,” Athos smiled to himself and glanced past the lattice, however, the prelate had been leaning so far back in the confessional that the only thing Athos could see was his hands, nervously clutching something in the darkness.

            “You may begin by reciting your mortal sins,” the priest proceeded.

            “My  _mortal_  sins… yes… I think I remember what those are,” Athos chuckled and bit his lip.  His fingers gently traced the outlines of the grille as his spoke.  “Well, to begin with… I abuse myself  _constantly_.”

            “Athos!” the priest exclaimed to the extent that he could convey his outrage without actually raising his voice.

            “Father?  That  _is_  a mortal sin, is it not?”

            “Yes, yes, very good.  Five  _Ave Marias_  for you - now get out.”

            “I’m not done confessing, father,” Athos was grinning despite himself, again biting down on his lower lip to punish himself, but to hear Aramis speak to him in that pedantic tone always sent shivers of pleasure down his spine.

            “It would take me a full month to hear the length and breadth of all your mortal sins, no doubt, which is unfortunately excess time I do not currently possess.”  Aramis sighed, and Athos could have sworn he heard a softly murmured prayer escape his lips.

            “And yet, it is the onus of your office to hear me out.”

            “Perhaps you’d like to move on to your more  _venial_  sins?”

            “Not yet.”

            Resigned, Athos figured, Aramis made the sign of the cross.  “Proceed,” he said, and leaned back in the confessional.

            “To continue, I have committed adultery with the mother of my son.”

            “Two things,” Aramis interrupted.

            “Yes, father?”

            “First of all, this is old news, isn’t it?  Your son is nearly twenty.”

            “I’m only recounting the sins I have committed since my last confession, father,” Athos corrected him.  He allowed the pause for the stunned silence on the other side of the lattice.  “You said – two things.  What is the second?”

            “The term ‘adultery’ is only used for married individuals.”

            “But I  _am_  married, father.”  Athos leaned against the lattice again and closed his eyes, his lips forming that involuntary smile that came upon him whenever he remembered the evening in the chapel in Château de La Fère.  “I have taken a vow that has tethered my heart and soul to another person for all eternity.”

            “Your heart and soul?”

            “But not my body, father.  That part was never explicitly specified.”

            “How peculiar,” Aramis mumbled, whipping the thin sheen of sweat that was appearing on his brow off with the sleeve of his robe.  “Also, rather blasphemous.  Only Our Lord can tether one’s soul for all eternity and only to Himself.”

            “Then, I confess to blaspheming ceaselessly, father.”

            “And inaccurate, if memory serves.  You only promised to love until your last dying breath.  There was nothing at all about soul-tethering.”

            “Then I confess that too.  I confess that my soul is tethered for all eternity, tethered by bonds I have not the strength to break, no matter how hard I’ve tried.  And I’ve  _tried_ , you know I have.”

            “God knows you’ve done everything in your power to break them,” Aramis whispered.

            “A friend of mine had the other day accused me of never saying what I mean to the person I have ever loved the most in this world.  I wished to rectify that.  For I have wronged him, and even though I could not make amends to him for all the things I’ve done, I wished to speak nothing but the truth to him.  This once.”

            “I am, as ever, powerless to stop you,” Aramis sighed and Athos could see that he had also rested his head on the lattice, just a breath away from his own head. 

            Athos continued to speak in a heated but hushed tone.  “I confess I have loved you insanely, blasphemously, as you point out.  I have spent most of my life torn between the pursuit of you and the pursuit of pushing you away from me.  I confess that I have never given you much choice.  Ever fearful of giving you the ability to walk away from me yourself, I repelled you with all my might.  Oh, of course, I told myself it was for your own benefit; that you had put your  _career_  on hold for me long enough; that I had no right to stand between you and your ambitions.  And look at how well you’ve done without me – a mere step away from a bishopric!”  Athos could see that Aramis was about to speak.  “Wait, I’m not done confessing yet.”

            Aramis nodded, “I’m listening.”

            “It was a lie that I had told myself,” he continued, an earnest sadness creeping into his voice.   “I did not push you away for your own sake.  I did it to punish you, for the love that you instilled in me, for rendering me paralyzed with it, for the pain it caused me to love you and to know that I could never really have you, not the way I wanted to have you:  with me, forever, always.  But even having pushed you away, I was not rid of you.  Your face still haunts all my waking dreams, and you know it, you know you are the first thing I think of when I awaken, and the last of my thoughts as I fall asleep.”  He paused to take a long overdue breath.  “Forgive me, Aramis.  Forgive me for everything.”

            The confessional was filled with a sort of sepulchral stillness.  Outside the church, Athos could hear the annoying drone of Bazin telling off some child for running too quickly, or speaking too loudly, or both.

            “I hate you for this, you know,” Aramis finally spoke, his voice strained even in its muffled state, so that Athos could hear the notes breaking as he spoke.  “I hate that even now you do not have the strength to say all of this to my face.  That you had to come here, to hide with me in this box, with this  _damn_  lattice,” Aramis had slammed his fist against the thin wooden partition, “which separates us!  You cannot even give me the satisfaction of seeing your eyes when you tell me these things!”

            “Aramis, your face, it might as well be the Gorgon’s head, you know how it petrifies me,” Athos sighed and pulled back a bit from the lattice, peering through the insufficiently numerous orifices.

            “Have you come here to make an act of contrition or to make  _excuses_?” the priest asked, coldly.

            “There are no sufficient excuses that I can make for my cowardice.”

            “So then, here you are – having made your act of contrition and confessed.  But you forget that our Holy Mother, the Catholic Church, requires _three_ acts from the penitent.”

            “My penance?”

            “Indeed.”

            “I have not forgotten.”

            “And I will tell you what it will be, but not here.  You’ve done enough  _here_ , you moral derelict.”

            Athos smiled and rocked back on his knees in the prie-dieu.  He had been kneeling there far too long for a man his age.

            “Whatever you say, father.”

            “Go.  I will receive you tonight.”

            “Where?”

            “In my  _bedroom_ , you eternal curse upon my existence,” Aramis whispered heatedly, but with an underlying warmth that shot right through the wooden partition and into the pit of Athos’s stomach.  “Bazin will show you in.”

            “If he doesn’t assassinate me first.”

            Aramis laughed in his usual clandestine way.

            “But then he would have to confess this sin to me, you realize.  And I would be merciless.”

 

            The bedroom of l’Abbé d’Herblay in Melun was decorated much in the same grandiose style as his old room at Noisy-Le-Sec, with the exception of a small painting of St. Sebastian’s martyrdom hanging over his bed.  An ever-widening smile spread across the face of Athos:  it was his own gift, made to his lover as a memento of a joke shared between the two of them.  The room was dim but for a few flickering candles on the small table at which Aramis was seated, engrossed in contemplation of the remnants of supper before him, wearing what, much to Athos’s disappointment, was certainly still his priestly vestments.

            Aramis raised his head, his eyes softly focusing on his guest.

            “Where exactly do you keep hidden the chain with which you constantly pull me back towards you?” he finally said, slowly getting out of his chair, although not making any movements to come closer.

            “The chain?”  Athos decided it was for him to take the advancing step.  “That is, indeed, how you see yourself.   _Sanctus Renatus in vinculis_.”

            Aramis inclined his head to the side, observing Athos with a mixture of apprehension, amusement, and disbelief.

            “Oh, Athos, you never disappoint.  You never fail to appear, and always, when I least expect you –  _Et in Arcadia ego_!”

            “Did you just compare me to  _Death_?”

            “You do have a similarly reliable constancy, do you not find?” Aramis took his own advancing step towards his guest.

            “I am here to learn what my penance for my sins is, from your own lips, and face to face, just as you requested.”  Athos stopped, separated from the man standing before him by a mere step.

            “Always,  _always_ , I would have done whatever you asked of me.  And you..,” Aramis sounded choked up.  “You… made me feel so…  _dismissed_.”  He averted his eyes and fixated them on some distant point on the table.  “Like some harlot you would have thrown out of your bed.”

            “Christ, Aramis… I never intended…”

            “Excuses again?”

            Athos shook his head.

            “Why do you come now?  What’s changed?”

            “I have grown weary of myself.”  It was the best and most honest reply Athos could think of.

            “A likely answer, but still no answer at all.  Are you dying?”  For a moment, fear flashed in the vicar’s eyes.

            “No!  Well…  I… how boring.”

            “Is it because of Fouquet then?”

            “Aramis, you’ve always had free reign to pick your particular bedfellows,” Athos sneered at the thought.

            “You think I’ve taken him as a lover?”

            “You’re the one who brought him up – not I.”

            “I don’t see you for  _five years_ …”

            “I’m sorry!  I really don’t have any more excuses for you – only this.  Whatever this is.”  He spread his arms and gazed into the vast emptiness between them.  “Aramis, forgive me.  I was wrong to deny you your choice.  But whatever penance you dictate for me –  _that_  will be your choice alone.”

            “Look me in my eyes when you ask my forgiveness!”  Aramis took the final step that separated them and grabbed onto his friend’s doublet with both his hands, shaking him and pulling him so close to himself that Athos could once again feel the sweetness of his familiar breath on his lips.

            “René,” Athos whispered, unable to control his hands at such close proximity and reaching towards the many layers of robe separating him from his beloved, “Forgive me.  Please, forgive me.”

            Aramis’s fingers clutched tighter upon his clothes, his lips were so close to Athos’s own, all he had to do would be to crane his neck to taste them.  Athos felt his throat become suddenly parched.

            “It is too late!” Aramis whispered, so hotly, so intimately, that Athos thought his brain might explode.

            “No, don’t say that.  It’s never too late to forgive.”  Athos swallowed, his throat still tightening despite his increased salivation.

            “Perhaps that is the only punishment suited for your sins?”  Aramis’s eyes narrowed and he drew even closer.  Athos’s hands had by then managed to travel around the other man and had clutched tightly at his lower back, that place where in the years of old he would always find a way of soothing the serpent rising up within Aramis.  “Perhaps your penance should be that I send you away, never to see you again?”

            “Why, Aramis, would you cut off the nose to spite the face?”

            Aramis growled, and brought the entire force of his anger to bear upon the other man’s lips.  Not even a thousand of Marie de Rohan’s kisses could have ever compared to this, this heat, this  _furnace_.  Athos groaned and pressed his hands into his lover’s back more firmly, each one of his fingers suddenly alive with joy again.

            “I hate you,” Aramis whispered, raining kisses now all over Athos’s face, his eyes, his nose, even the tip of his chin.  “ _Hate_.  Hate you _so_  much.”

            “I hate what you’re wearing,” Athos moaned, his fingers anxiously pulling on his friend’s damned collar.  “Really, it’s incredibly unbecoming.”

            “Shut up, shut  _up_!”

            Athos felt teeth on the crook of his neck, another moan escaping his lips.

            “I swore after England that you would not  _do_  this to me again!” Athos could feel the heated waves of anger emanating off his lover’s body.  “That I wouldn’t let you manipulate me!”  Aramis’s hands were making quick work of Athos’s doublet and accoutrements.  The Count’s sword fell to the floor with a loud clang.  “How dare you come armed into the presence of the Lord?”

            “Aramis…” This was a familiar state of incoherency that he was descending into again, and Athos welcomed it.

            “ _Chirst_ , Athos!  It’s not that difficult to figure out how to take this thing off!”  Aramis slapped the other man’s hands away as the latter had been fumbling hopelessly with his vestments.  “You’d think you’ve never done it before!”

            “I’m sorry,” Athos mumbled again, certain that his entire brain function had been diverted elsewhere.  His neck was attacked again, careless of leaving marks on his skin, the kind that in the past they would have avoided with a sort of religiosity of its own.

            “ _Are_  you sorry?”

            “Yes!”  This exclamation was likely elicited more by what Aramis’s hand was suddenly enacting inside his trousers than by any real feeling of contrition, but it did appear to be the appropriate response since Aramis roughly pushed Athos onto the bed and climbed on top of him.

            “I could kill you,” Aramis whispered, looking suddenly soothed as he straddled the other man’s hips.  A twitch underneath him informed him that such a threat was a surprisingly welcome turn of the conversation.  Aramis pulled his robe over his head and tossed it aside.

            “Layers, damn layers, always so many damn layers,” Athos muttered angrily, pulling at his lover’s long undershirt.

            “Apparently never enough of them,” Aramis smirked and moved the hands of Athos away.  “No.  I’ll tell you when you’re allowed to touch me.”

            “Now?” Athos bucked his hips upwards.

            Aramis slapped Athos’s face, neither firmly nor particularly gently, and lowered his mouth again to bite at the Count’s collarbone.  Athos shut his eyes, blissfully aware of strong fingers tangling roughly in his hair, the evidence of his lover’s own arousal angrily stabbing him in the stomach.

            “Now?” he asked tentatively, trying vainly to catch Aramis’s ear with his teeth.

            “Do you remember what you said to me all those years ago at Noisy-Le-Sec?”  Aramis’s face hovered like a painted angel above Athos, who wanted desperately to be allowed to reach up and put his lips all over it.

            “Which one of all the things?”

            “You told me that your cock forgave me, but that you did not,” Aramis arched one of his eyebrows.

            “Ah, Monsieur l’Abbé has an excellent memory!”

            “Yes, indeed, I never forget a thing.  Especially not  _words_.  I am very good at remembering words.”

            “I have already admitted to having sinned gravely and repeatedly against you…”

            “ _You_  are the one who has cut off the nose to spite the face!”

            “I know!  Damn it, I admitted as much!”  Athos bucked up against the other man again.  This conversation, at this particular moment, was worse than had Aramis simply flogged him for an hour.

            “Say you love me.  Say you’re mine.”

            “Aramis…”

            “You don’t get to hide in a confessional.  Not after having tormented me my whole life.  Not anymore.  Not  _now_.”

            “Aramis…”

            “Tell me what I need to hear,” Aramis’s lips hung a mere breath away from his own again, his hands digging fingernails into Athos’s wrists as he held his friend’s arms over his head.  “Tell me… and I will absolve you.”

            Athos could feel a stinging in his eyes.

            “You already know that…”

            “Say the  _words_.  It is the words I want right now.”  
            “Porthos says that half of what we say to each other means the opposite of what it means.”

            “And the other half?” Aramis had not loosened his hold on the Count’s wrists.

            “The other half, apparently, is insults.”

            Aramis laughed, laughed despite himself, and dropped his face into the crook of the other man’s neck, inhaling his familiarly warm scent.  Athos could not move his hands, but the top of his lover’s ear was finally within the reach of his teeth, and he gently took it in his mouth, causing a small shiver to run down Aramis’s upturned back.

            “Aramis,” he whispered.

            “Yes?”  Aramis lifted his face from Athos’s chest and looked into his lust-clouded eyes again.

            “I love you.  I am yours.”

            “Which half was that?  The lies or the insults?”  Aramis smiled and tentatively mouthed at Athos’s kiss-swollen lower lip.

            “Now  _you_  shut up,” Athos whispered.

            Aramis rocked back against his hips and made a quick sign of the cross across Athos’s face.

            “ _Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen_.”

            “Thank you, St. René, patron of perpetual self-denial.”

            Aramis let go of the other man’s hands so that he could shed the rest of his undergarments.

            “There will be no perpetual self-denial tonight,” he said, carelessly tossing aside the vestiges of his coverings.  “That’s not part of your penance.”

            The ivory gleam of Aramis’s skin in the dimly lit room beckoned Athos.

            “You may touch me now,” the priest said and lowered his mouth again to press against Athos’s eagerly awaiting lips.

            “ _Et in Arcadia ego_ ,” Athos mumbled, his body suddenly alive with a youthful fervor, and clutching his lover’s behind with both his liberated hands.  Aramis gasped against his mouth, but did not push his hands away, grinding his hips back into Athos’s strained abdomen.

            “Come to me, my beautiful death,” Aramis wrapped his arms around Athos and pulled the two of them impossibly close together.

            There wasn’t a part of Aramis’s body that Athos not tasted hundreds upon hundreds of times before, and yet, it was almost worth the years of abstaining to be reunited with each part again, as if for the first time.  There were times in their lives, Athos thought as nails raked long scratches along his back, when they had come so close to perfect happiness, but it always reached the apex of perfection at moments like these.  He smiled to himself and proceeded to draw his mouth, slowly and deliberately, over the exposed skin, savoring it like the long awaited meal that it was:  the neck, the chest, the stomach, the hips, the thighs, right down to the soles of his lover’s feet.

            At some point, Athos was vaguely aware of the last flickering of the dying candles as their wicks extinguished themselves in the molten wax, but it mattered little since the heat he was feeling from the press of Aramis’s thighs around his waist, from the way their chests slid past each other in that pool of sweat that their bodies had created, was more than making up for any of the darkness into which they had descended.  The guttural cry he was finally able to tear from Aramis’s throat sent new waves of desire down his spinal column, until it exploded out of him, and sent them both into a helpless heap of limbs till the breaking of dawn.

            His internal clock, coupled with the persistent crowing of cocks, was telling Athos it was time to leave, but all of Aramis’s appendages were wrapped so tightly around him that not even the Devil himself would have been able to drag him out of that bed.  Instead, he leaned in closer, his lips drawing sleepy trails down his lover’s cheeks.  Aramis wrinkled his forehead, the lines on it deepening, changing shape in the light of day.  Athos traced the fine creases around his sleeping lover’s eyes with the tip of his tongue, thinking him no less beautiful for all these signs of age, which he had spent his life watching form, like canyons cutting up the landscape of their bodies.

            “Tell me you’re not planning to leave,” Aramis stirred and pressed closer.

            “I can’t very well stay here at the vicarage with you, can I?”

            “I meant Melun,” Aramis shifted and gave Athos an insolent grin.

            “And leave you here, alone?  With Nicholas Fouquet out and about?  Not on your life!”

            Aramis laughed and slid down to rest his head on Athos’s shoulder.

            “I told you – we’re not lovers!  Good Lord, that man chases so many skirts, one loses count!”

            “This, coming from the connoisseur of the female form that you are?”

            “Athos!  I swear!  Not that I am not flattered by this unexpected display of jealousy.”  He stretched his neck to place a kiss on Athos’s face.

            “I don’t trust him,” Athos mumbled.

            “Athos, you don’t even trust your own shadow.”

            “And neither should you,” Athos ran his fingers through his lover’s tangled hair.

            “That man is going to make me a bishop some day, perhaps a cardinal even,” Aramis stretched languidly.

            “Are there available bishoprics then in the vicinity?”

            “No,” Aramis rewrapped a thigh around Athos.  “But bishops too are mortal.”

            The two men stared at each other momentarily, each one trying to plunder the depths of the other’s mind, before finally breaking out in a small, shared outburst of mirth.

            “I don’t want to move yet,” Athos announced, pulling Aramis’s face in for a morning nibble.

            “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve been thoroughly fucked,” Aramis replied with a tinge of threat in his voice.  “I do not think the entire breadth of your sins has been quite expiated yet, my friend.”

            “Will I need to be five years worth of fucked?”

            Aramis squinted and contemplated Athos with a serene expression.

            “Maybe ten years worth.  I know you and your excuses.  Might as well take advantage of the opportunity while it presents its ass.”

            “ _Carpe diem_ , as it were?”  Athos asked with an amused look.

            “When have I ever failed to  _carpe_  that  _diem_?  Hmm?”

            “Never, my love.”

            Suddenly assuming a rather sober expression, Aramis hovered briefly above his friend’s face.  “I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth,” he said in a quiet and composed voice.

            “Yes – anything.”

            “You said you loved me.  That you’ve loved me these past five years, even as your pride and obstinacy kept us apart.  Today, right now, you love me – is that so?”

            Athos knitted his eyebrows, but the clear-eyed, serious look on his lover’s face left no room in that bed for a sarcastic remark.  “Yes.  That is very much so.”

            “And will you love me tomorrow?  And the day after that?”

            Athos knew at that moment, as certainly as he knew it the night before, that he would say all the right words, as many times as Aramis needed to hear them. 

 

_Pierrefonds, 1655_

 

            “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure of your visit?”  Porthos asked once he let Athos out of the gargantuan grip of his welcoming hug.

            “Do I really need a reason to visit you, other than the one I gave you last time?”  Athos laughed and took Porthos under the arm, strolling with him towards the château.

            “That you wanted to see me?  No, no, that reason is always sufficient!  Although…” Porthos looked at his friend slyly.

            “Although?”

            “You do look… Well… Rejuvenated, almost?”

            “All right – you caught me.”  Athos gave Porthos a friendly shoulder slap.  “I did have an ulterior motive for visiting you again.”

            Porthos gave his friend a curious look.

            “I came here to thank you.”

FIN

           

  


**Author's Note:**

> Whew, okay! That completes the uploads, at least for this series, from my LJ account. I hope you enjoy these, posterity! Kudos are nice, but comments are LOVE.


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